


they were told many things

by mildlydiscouraging



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Era, Canon Trans Character, Gen, Memories, Nail Polish, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Siblings, Starting Over, briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-14 14:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlydiscouraging/pseuds/mildlydiscouraging
Summary: And because they were twins they listened to the things that they were told, and they remembered.Things come back in bits and pieces, things no one even knew were forgotten in the first place. Taako answers and remembers.





	they were told many things

Most of memory is automatic. Someone asks you a certain kind of question and you answer without hesitation, be in out loud or only in your head: what color are your eyes, what day is today, when's your birthday, what's seven plus three, where are you going, where are you from. The autobiographical, the factual, the historical. There is bias in everything, yes, and there is lying, and there is evasion, but most of the time most people don't have to think about answers too hard. Memory is an automatic recall a majority of the time. You don't notice it until you can't think of the answer immediately.

●◐○◑●

Taako is pretty used to running on autopilot. His instincts have gotten him out of some pretty hairy situations in the past and he's just fine with relying on them and only them. Thinking about something past his first gut feeling? Nah. Taako's got more important things to use that brain power on, like making sure the wet nail polish on his thumb doesn't smudge.

Somewhere just under the edge of his bed is one of those big old books Angus is always leaving around, just the perfect density to prop up the corner of his dresser that had unfortunately given out while he was sitting on top of it painting his nails in the first place. He only had three more fingers to go, but knowing himself he probably wouldn't actually do anything about it if he waited 'til then, so here Taako was, rummaging under his bed and praying to whatever god had been most helpful last that he hasn't wasted all that Seafoam Dream (especially since Fantasy Costco had stop stocking this particular color after an unsuccessful con involving two chickens and a charmed soccer ball).

He manages to find the book ( _Thoughts on Perma-Universal Transitional States in Planar Geometry_ , where did that kid even _find_ this stuff?) and shoves it under the dresser before getting back to business. Luckily there are no dents in the pale green, although his right hand is still kind of a wreck. It figures that being a little ambidextrous would never help with the important stuff, huh?

 _Should've done the olive oil thing_ , Taako thinks to himself. He doesn't know where it comes from, but he knows what it means. It's best not to question.

●◐○◑●

"You're gonna mess it up! Gimme that."

"No!"

Taako holds the little bottle of enchanted paint above both their heads, sending a few rainbow shifting drops onto the wooden floor of the caravan. Lup glares at him and stands up on her knees to grab it, clamping her thumb over the top as she yanks it from his grip. Taako rolls his eyes but doesn't fight her, instead leaning back against his pillows to watch trees flicker past the window behind her.

"How do you always get yours so perfect?" Taako asks. Despite the fact that his nails are still drying, he's fiddling with the tassels on the pillow directly underneath him and a few threads come loose to stick to the wet paint.

Lup hums, not really paying attention, and Taako sits back up. "No, seriously," he says. "How do you do that?"

"You're too impatient," Lup says, looking up to raise her eyebrow at him. She turns back to her nails as she continues, "Also if you put olive oil around your nails before you paint them the messy stuff cleans up real easily."

"I'm not impatient! You're the one who's always running into things without thinking it through. Taako's good out here, remember?"

Lup tilts her head. Her right hand done, she starts on the other and continues ignoring Taako's glare.

"You're impatient when it comes to things you want," she says eventually. "You always want things to turn out perfectly the first time so you rush it and end up disappointed. Nail polish, cakes, that one delayed fireball spell you couldn't get; if you don't get it right the first time, you give up."

"Alright, geez," Taako says. "All I was looking for was some sweet beauty hacks, not a psychoanalysis sesh."

Lup shrugs. "I calls 'em like I sees 'em." She has three fingers left to paint and the colors swirl evenly across her hands in the light escaping from the trees outside.

The caravan jolts over a substantial rock and Lup's next perfectly level line jags across her finger.

"Oh for fu—"

The next rock jars a huge glob of paint out of the bottle and into the air to splatter on the wood and Lup's skirt both. The road must just be shitty, because the bumps continue, and Taako manages to catch a few jolts of paint in a levitation spell just in time.

"Nice going, doofus," Taako says. "Not so perfect now, huh?"

Lup glares and blasts a gust of short but successful wind into his face. The paint splatters across his cheeks like sudden multi-color freckle fireworks and her laughter carries all the way through the forest.

●◐○◑●

It's only on the fourth cycle that Taako starts to notice the depletion.

"Yeah, don't you remember when I ate all my hard candy?" Magnus asks when he brings it up after dinner. "I was upset for like three months after I figured that out."

"Wasn't really paying attention," he says, scrubbing at the dirty dishes a little bit harder than necessary. Merle is drying, while Lup is rifling through the fridge looking for something sweet. The little flakes of chipped off paint in the swirling dishwater are hypnotizing and he stops washing for a moment.

"Well, we'll probably get back to some kind of civilization soon enough," Lup says from inside the fridge. "Did one of you eat the rest of my frozen cookie dough? Come on guys..."

Taako drops the plate he was holding into the water. The noise is muted, but Merle, at his elbow, notices and says, "It's just some nail polish, Taako, geez."

"It's not," Taako insists. He slams the faucet off, shakes his hands dry-ish, and grabs the edge of the sink. His voice betrays him and cracks on the second word, and Lup looks at him over the open fridge door with an eyebrow raised.

"You good?" She asks.

"Fine."

Taako grabs the hand towel looped through the cabinet handle too forcefully and the door swings open, almost hitting him in the face. He smacks it away but it swings back again and he gives a short, frustrated yell.

Lup closes the fridge and goes over to him. She gently closes the cabinet with one hand and puts the other on Taako's shoulder. "Breath, Koko, yeah?"

"I'm not— _panicking_ ," Taako says, but it comes out more winded than he intended and oh yeah, that's probably because he's hyperventilating, when did that happen? He drops the strangled dish towel and grabs his own elbows instead, arms wrapped around his body.

Lup doesn't say anything, just turns him around and walks him to her room. She pushes him towards the bed, and he feels _fine_ , really, but when she goes to close the door Taako can feel the world start to swim. The only thing keeping him grounded is the itchy feeling in the corners of his fingers, the glitter nail polish that still clings to them rough and irritating. He starts picking at them, trying to scratch off as much of the remnants as he can, and doesn't notice Lup's frown as his nail beds start to bleed.

"C'mon." Lup pats the bed in front of her when she sits down. She pushes at his shoulder until he sighs and sits with his back to her.

"The good thing about our bodies physically regenerating every year," she says as she starts to untangle his hair, "other than avoiding wrinkles, of course, is that you at least get your sparkly nails back."

Taako examines the hands in his lap. There are still stubborn flecks of color at the edges of his nails (thank you, chunky glitter) even after eight months. A few cycles ago he tried to figure out if they chipped the same way every time but quickly lost track. Lup tugs his hair gently and he looks back up as she starts to braid it.

"You ever think about going short?" She asks."Y'know, cuz it'll come back in a year anyway?"

"I'm not sure if it's really _me_ ," Taako replies, but it's obvious how empty an answer it is.

"Come on," Lup drawls, "lemme cut your hair, baby bro."

"Six minutes doesn't count," he says reflexively, but he sighs and reaches over to grab the scissors off the nightstand. "Don't fuck me over too badly."

Lup cheers and takes the scissors, snapping an elastic around his hair at about shoulder length. "No need to fret, darling. You're in good hands."

When Taako reemerges, Lup walking into the common room behind him with her arms outstretched in presentation, Barry and Merle start clapping. Lucretia looks up from the map she was studying and smiles when he bows theatrically.

"What's up with the new do?" Barry asks.

"Reinvention is good for the soul," Taako says simply, crossing his arms.

Lup slings her arm around his shoulder and hangs off of him as she explains her vision and prowess and all sorts of shit, and Taako smiles at the heavy weight of the crook of her elbow on his bare neck. The glitter in the trenches of his nail beds doesn't itch anymore.

●◐○◑●

After everything, after the storm and the fire and the interdimensional planar terror and _everything_ , Taako is sitting on the couch with his sister.

"Stop fidgeting."

It seems so simple. The secondhand couch is a little worn; one of the pillows on the back is crushed beyond recognition from someone's constant slouch there, and there are pins ostensibly keeping the cover on the arm but really holding the entire thing together. It was just what Taako wanted—not new and clinical in constant reminder of his "new" life, but full of a history that wasn't his. His was too complicated to deal with right now.

" _You_ stop fidgeting."

Lup is across from him wearing one of his shirts, her legs folded underneath her, her hair messily tied up. Taako leans over the hand of hers he is holding, his hair brushing his shoulders, and shushes her again even though she hasn't said anything. He was so used to the ambient noise of humming engines and magic on the moon, the outskirts of Neverwinter at night was claustrophobia-inducing. Even when there were other people around, he kept finding himself humming and muttering to himself just to fill the silence.

"I can't believe I'm gonna have to re-pierce my ears," Lup says three nails later. They're a little uneven, but still pretty good.

"Sorry for not keeping up with your preferred number of piercings," Taako says. He caps the bottle and shakes it a little before continuing to paint. "Wasn't really expecting to have to make a clone of myself for my undead twin sister to live in. Also didn't remember you existed, so."

Lup hums. "That's fair."

They lapse back into silence as Taako continues painting the rest of Lup's nails. She starts humming, something quietly familiar that Taako can't place. The rhythmic repetition (stroke, stroke, dunk the brush in the paint, stroke) gives them both something to focus on, although their silence isn't so much for lack of words as it is for lack of any need to speak.

When Taako finishes, he makes Lup hold out both her hands. With a wave he dries her nails completely and raises an eyebrow.

"Hmm," Lup says. "I think red."

Taako smiles and transmutes her nails from their cheap and boring grey to a bright cherry, shiny and tough as, well, nails. With one last flourish, blowing on her hands once for show, he tucks his hair behind his ear and caps the bottle definitively.

Lup holds her left hand out in front of her, closing one eye and tilting it back and forth as she considers Taako's paint job.

"Not too shabby," she says. When he starts to preen, she flicks her fingers in his face, a few sparks shooting out. "Don't get too full of yourself. Your edges are still uneven."

"So sorry, your high and mightiness." He raises his hands in surrender. "Although for all you know that could be the style nowadays. You've been an umbrella for a decade, Lulu, you don't know."

"Mess is never in fashion," Lup says confidently. She admires her own nails for a second, then smiles at him. "You'd think you'd have learned that by now."

Taako rolls his eyes and starts painting his own nails, but Lup takes the little bottle out of his hands.

"Let the professional handle this one," she says as she shakes the bottle. "Now go get the olive oil."

"Auntie really knew what she was talking about, huh?" Taako calls from the kitchen. He says it without thinking of where it came from, not knowing what he knew.

Lup just laughs.

●◐○◑●

Memory is automatic. We take for granted not having to question where our answers some from. We take for grated what we know, what we remember. We listen and absorb the things we are told even when don't notice, and we don't appreciate how much we need them.

Until they're gone and return again. Then we love them even more.

**Author's Note:**

> misleadingly serious title and summary quote from american gods by neil gaiman. i read that line and immediately screamed bc i KNEW i was gonna write taz fic based around it. i'm just not ready to let these kiddos go yet. (i actually finished editing this while watching buzzfeed unsolved talk abt marie laveau, who is supposedly this quote's subject's great granddaughter or smth whoaaa)
> 
> ohhhhhhhhh, written pre-finale, before griffin so kindly told us lup's dna was in the universe still. but, uh, three cheers for twins, clone growing tubes, and gender transitioning magics! godiwishthatwereme.jpeg
> 
> also fun fact lup's nails are the same color as my dishes. 1. thanks target 2. i own dishes now, because i'm a real grown up. that's right, everybody, keaton moves into the gw dorms tomorrow morning! shit.
> 
> tumblr @[moonfullofstars](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com)


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